Backing Forward
by PrettyPurpleHaze
Summary: A one-shot fic set around the time Harry decides to give up. D/H


Title: Backing Forward  
  
Disclaimer: Of COURSE I don't own them. I just like to screw up their emotions and then put them back. :)  
  
Rating: G  
  
Summary: Helping a friend out . . . D/H - 1/1  
  
Author's Note: I wrote this when taking a break from trying to finish 'NVw/A,' I just happened to watch the episode where Harry starts to fully give up and wrote this one-shot. I'm posting it for everyone who reviewed my other story, everyone seemed so thrilled with the reemergence of the D/H romance that I figured I'd FINALLY post this little fic. Enjoy!  
  
**  
  
She'd been gone for a while, too long to pin down a date properly - but she did anyway. It was because she left the day after his birthday, and she always remembered his birthday since that time in her junior year when they compared useless information while breaking for a round of SAT practice . . . He always helped her when she needed it.  
  
She remembered the message he'd left at the hotel she was staying at then, a moderately nice place she found discounted on a website because her mother had moved to Portsmouth and she didn't want to impose on her friends. It was funny -- looking back on it - that she truly didn't not reject the offers to stay with friends because, secretly, she had some fantasy that she and Harry would magically end up back in her tiny rented room, clothes melted away.  
  
But, honestly, she probably wished it. Just a little.  
  
After his birthday she tried not to think about him anymore, she ignored his apologetic message and left town, filling in the rest of her Inspiring Event assignment by what little she gathered from his halting interviews - ignoring the seeping anger of blatant rejection.  
  
It was almost a year now and Harry Senate wasn't part of her vocabulary anymore, hardly even a thought in her nights - and only a side notion of comparison when she dated.  
  
To her, that was better.  
  
She didn't wish about him anymore, or worry about him, or wonder about him . . . Maybe she wondered a bit, but not too much. Because he was a dashed hope and Dana didn't like to linger on those.  
  
She never asked about him anymore when she talked to Tara, who still lived close to Winslow and had a younger sister going there, she made careful sure of it. But one day, when the conversation ran thin, her friend forgot to acknowledge the rule Dana had set for herself and told her what gossip little Trisha had brought from old teachers they had in common.  
  
'Mr. Senate cracked up, crazy, huh? . . . No pun. Isn't that weird though, I mean it's Mr. Senate . . . Must have been because he got stabbed last year by that kid's brother. Trisha said that they even took him to a hospital for a while for stress or something.'  
  
She hasn't talked to Tara since that day, when she hung up on her. It was rude but she couldn't call back and apologize, she was too busy crying. After that long pause on sabbatical from Harry Senate, she'd been thrust back into everything. He was stabbed? But he had to be okay . . . But he wasn't emotionally fine . . .  
  
She thought of it for the rest of the day, then the next and she cried a little more before she logged onto the Internet and secured herself a room in Boston.  
  
**  
  
Her knuckles seemed sensitive when they hit the wood and she drew them back, slipping them into her coat pocket. It was getting cold and she'd forgotten what the air felt like here, biting your skin into red flush. No one came, and she didn't hear any footsteps as she shifted on her feet and went to lean against the opposite wall to stare at the chipped black, high- gloss paint.  
  
She was beyond that once, when she met him here for their third date. He'd invited her in while he finished getting ready and she recalled thinking he'd opened the door with an open dress shirt to show off a little. She remembered smiling when he went into his bedroom and she walked around the apartment thinking he was cocky enough to expect that they would have sex tonight, and she wasn't planning on rejecting him . . .  
  
Stepping forward, she knocked again, sharper as the warmth of the hallways quelled the chill-induced irritation on her knuckles. This time she was rewarded with sounds of thudding approach, and the lock sliding behind the wood before it opened and he stood there . . .  
  
When her eyes fell on him she breathed in quickly, just for a second, before he could catch her.  
  
She expected fragility, a man not as imposing or demanding as the one that threaded her memories. She'd fully prepared herself for the fallen shell, the shattered expression, but she hadn't readied herself for this.  
  
Because Harry Senate didn't look like any of those things her mind had prepared her for. In fact, he looked exactly the same.  
  
His strength still held her presence, his eyes locked in to leave no room for disillusion, those same eyes she saw every time she looked at him past and present. He didn't look hurt, or disheveled, or distressed, or anything she expected. He looked like Harry.  
  
"Hey," she whispered, more upset than he seemed to be. It scared her, knowing something had happened and he looked entirely the same. It shook her to think everyone could look at him and think he was fine, because he wasn't . . . in the same Harry, she didn't see pride. And Harry always had pride. She used to think it was pretty annoying . . . She didn't anymore.  
  
"Dana. What are you doing here?" He moved a little, pulling up the fallen sleeve on one forearm and staring at her.  
  
"That's how you greet an ex-student, ex-date, ex-puppy lover?"  
  
"I'd get you coffee but that's for the ex-teacher, ex-auto mechanic, ex . . . something."  
  
She quirked her mouth up on one side and stepped forward. "Can I come in?"  
  
He nodded without preamble and let her through. The place was a little tossed but nothing extreme, nothing to indicate he'd gone off the deep end like one of those dramatic scenes people envision, wreaking the place. She was beginning to see she didn't know what to expect.  
  
"So how have you been?"  
  
"Wonderful, you?"  
  
"Good," he answered a little too quickly as he tossed a couch pillow to one end so she could sit down. "What brings you back to Boston. Another paper about my grand influence of good?"  
  
He spoke the last words bitterly, berating himself before sitting down.  
  
"No papers. Just you, and the good you *do* achieve."  
  
Even under stress Harry was not a dim man. His eyes snapped to her and he knew why she had come. "Who told you?"  
  
"Rumors. From people I knew here, things get around."  
  
"I can see."  
  
"So . . . what happened?"  
  
He stared at her blankly before settling back into his chair. "What makes you think I'm just going to tell you everything that's happened to me just because you made a trip to look up you now-nutty ex-teacher and, moronically, dating partner?"  
  
"Because I'm just that charming."  
  
For a second she thought he was going to tell her to leave but instead he just pulled himself out of the chair and headed to a low cabinet.  
  
"Drink?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
"Whiskey? It's Jack."  
  
She shrugged and slid her coat off. "Sure. Even though this isn't the healthiest way to go about things."  
  
"Yeah, and I'm on top of the healthy list at the moment," he said pouring a straight into his short, fat glass and pausing to get some Coke to fill hers in with.  
  
He held it out to her and fell back onto his chair, downing the burning liquid without qualm. Dana drank hers a bit before setting it on the table, too strong for her tastes.  
  
"So how are you doing in school?"  
  
"This isn't about me."  
  
"I'm supposed to tell you all my problems and I can't ask you how things are going at school?" he asked in his smartass way. So she tilted her head and sighed - least he gave in. Tic for tat.  
  
"Things are going pretty well, I'm starting to work with kids now, grade- school level, but as filled with attitudes as any teenager I ever met," she griped softly.  
  
"Naw, they'll get worse. And go downhill."  
  
"Give me hope, Miss Merry Sunshine," she complained softly.  
  
He raised his glass to her in a toast before saying, "What do you think I cracked up for?"  
  
"Could be a good thing. I hung out in a Modern Media Dissertation class a couple months ago and Susan Sarandon says that she seriously worries about people that don't crack up before, I think, thirty. How old are you?"  
  
"Twenty-nine."  
  
"Right under the wire."  
  
"She has been my pinnacle of good advice since 'Rocky Horror Picture Show,' what does she say about those runs in fishnets?" he asked as he set down the empty glass.  
  
"Harry . . ."  
  
"Already at a loss? It's okay, Ronnie and Steven left not too long ago, I'm sure they can help you out with really well spoken platitudes."  
  
"Sorry bout that."  
  
"What?"  
  
"That no one knows the right thing to say."  
  
"Even me," he said quietly.  
  
"Come on, after YEARS of it I think you need a break."  
  
He shook his head and looked to the table in front of him. "I never knew the right thing to say. Ever. I tried, I thought maybe it was correct, but it just blew up in my face every single time. Every kid I tried to help was . . . hopeless."  
  
"STOP IT!" Her venomous voice shook him and he looked at her abruptly, her cheeks flushed bright red. "You did a lot, Harry! You did so much you don't even know about. I'm sorry for the people who didn't get what you were saying, I'm sorry for the people who *didn't* tell you how much you helped them when they needed it, I'm sorry you feel like . . . like . . ."  
  
She was flushed, radiant in her skin, her eyes were sincere but upset, and her mouth was a little agape with the search for a perfect word.  
  
". . .You're sorry for too much," he stated simply.  
  
She snapped her mouth shut and breathed deeply before answering. "I don't think so."  
  
Harry shook his head, rising quickly from his chair and moving away from her. "Why do you care anyway, Dana? I haven't seen you in a year and you come back with 'Dr. Phil' stamped on your forehead?"  
  
"If I was Dr. Phil I would have all those platitudes for you."  
  
"I'm serious, what are you doing here?" He turned then, pinning her with his gaze. She felt her legs go heavy and she shrugged.  
  
"I got a soft spot for you, I guess . . ."  
  
"You don't have to, I have enough people trying to take care of me, control me. I don't need another one traipsing around too."  
  
"I do not traipse," Dana corrected. "I stride."  
  
He looked at her and it'd been too long, so he did let a little tilt of his mouth happen. In return he got a brilliant smile as she settled into his couch. He fell onto the chair and sighed.  
  
"You don't know what you're trying to get into, Dana."  
  
"I doubt Freshmen Psyche prepared me, but I'm willing to try."  
  
"Don't you have things, a life, you want to get back to?"  
  
"Don't you?"  
  
The room fell into silence and they sat.  
  
Minutes passed before he shifted, his eyes coming up . . .  
  
"Yeah. But you can't cure me, Dana. It's not like that."  
  
Dana smiled softly. "Who said anything about curing? It's just my aim to make you my willing love slave . . ." When he doesn't say anything she shrugs. "I know that, Harry. I'm just going buzz around you for a while, okay? Just think of me as . . . your recovery buddy."  
  
"I don't need --"  
  
"Fine then. I wanted to say it like this anyway. Just think of me as your friend, Harry. One who wants to help - not badger," she added with a wink.  
  
"You think that charm is going to get you whatever you want don't you?"  
  
"Is it working?"  
  
"No . . . but I'll let you buzz around anyway."  
  
"Thanks, Harry."  
  
" . . . Your welcome."  
  
The End. 


End file.
